3 Breast biomechanics

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The image shows a female runner. There are seven images of the runner as she goes through the different phases of the running stride to complete one full step.

Now that you know the anatomy of the breast you can start to understand how a breast moves when participating in different activities. With limited internal support and the skin as the only external support the breasts move when the body moves, whether it's walking, running, cycling or dancing, and breasts move most when the activity is high impact, like running and jumping. Each breast itself is, on average, about half a kilogram, and movement of the breast mass during exercise can cause the skin to stretch beyond its natural elastic range and cause permanent damage. Wearing a good fitting sports bra can reduce breast movement by up to 74% when compared to a bare breasted condition (Norris et al., 2021).

Activity 2 How do breasts move during exercise?

Timing: Allow about 10 minutes

Watch the video which shows the science used by the Research Group in Breast Health at Portsmouth University to establish the exact movement of the breast during exercise. Then answer the following questions:

1. What are the three types of breast movement?
2. Which exercise elicits movement in all three dimensions?
3. What are some of the negative effects of not wearing the right level of support?

Download this video clip.Video player: sfps_1_s5_act2.mp4

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Transcript

PRESENTER

Professor Joanna Wakefield-Scurr is leading the latest research. She’s going to use motion capture technology to show me exactly what’s happening to our breasts when we exercise.

JOANNA WAKEFIELD-SCURR

What this is showing is how the breast moves in three dimensions. Forwards and backwards. It moves side to side. And then this is how much the breast moves up and down.

PRESENTER

So if you’re working out at home and you’re doing things like star jumps, then you would expect all three types of movements, but it will vary according to which exercise you’re doing.

JOANNA WAKEFIELD-SCURR

Absolutely. And because star jumps really cause a lot of breast movement to occur because your arms are up in the air whilst your body is moving, and then you’ve got the impact on the ground as well. So star jumps are particularly nasty.

[LAUGHTER]

PRESENTER

Perfect excuse to not do star jumps.

In an everyday bra in slow motion, it’s easy to see the problem. Our skin can naturally stretch by around 60% before risk of damage. But Joanna’s team have measured stretching up to 93% on the breasts of women exercising without support. This amount of movement can also damage the ligaments that hold up the breast.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

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Discussion

1. In the video Professor Wakefield-Scurr explains how the breast moves in three dimensions: forwards and backwards, side to side and up and down.
2. Performing a star jump can cause the breast to move in all three dimensions throughout the movement.
3. Performing exercise without the correct support can cause stretching of up to 93% in the breast as well as causing damage to the ligaments that hold up the breast (Cooper’s ligaments).

The way the breast moves and the implications of different movements on the breast can influence the type of support that is required. In the next section you’ll look at the implications of not meeting these requirements for support during sport and exercise.